Including the inaugural Mashcat Twitter chat in April of 2015, we have had 19 chats since the second round of Mashcat began. Now, it’s time to start planning for even more.

What is a #mashcat Twitter chat? It is a way for us share information (and sometimes war stories) about a topic of interest to programmers, catalogers, metadata folk, and techies active in libraries, archives, museums, and related cultural heritage institutions. By meeting every month or so, we hope to tear down the walls that sometimes divide those who wish to put metadata in service to the benefit of all.

As the name implies, the chat takes place on Twitter at a time announced in advance. Somebody acts as moderator, asking a set of questions, spread out over the hour; participants can answer them—then let the conversation ramify. The #mashcat hashtag is used to keep everything together. After each chat, a summary is published allowing those who couldn’t attend the chat to read along.

Past topics have included:

How catalogers and library technologists can build better relationships

Use Cases: What exactly are the problems catalogers and metadata librarians want to solve with code?

Is there a library metadata itch you would liked scratched? Do you want to learn how folks “on the other side” do something? Would you like to moderate a chat? Then visit this Google document and add your suggestions!

We’re pleased to announce that there will be one last Mashcat webinar in 2016! Mark your calendars!

Date/Time

Speaker

Title

20 December 2016 (20:00-21:00 UTC / 15:00-16:00 EST)

Kathryn Lybarger

Regular Expressions in Practice

Regular expressions are not just for programmers anymore; they are supported by common software and systems used for cataloging and metadata, and allow for very powerful search and replace, even complete reformatting of library data! In this webinar, we’ll discuss the building blocks of regular expressions, practice identifying what they match (and do not match!), and consider how we can use them to make everyday library work more efficient.Recording / Slides

Many thanks to Stacie Trail of the University of Minnesota for providing hosting for the webinar.

We are excited to announce that registration is now open for the second face-to-face Mashcat event in North America, which be held on January 24th, 2017, at Georgia State University in Atlanta, Georgia. We invite you to view the schedule for the day as well as register at http://www.mashcat.info/2017-event/. We have a strict limit on the number of participants who can attend in person, so register early!

The event will also be streamed as a free webinar, so if you cannot attend in person, registration for the webinar will open in January.

If you run into any issues with registering, you can email gmcharlt AT gmail.com.

The MashcatATL planning group is excited to announce that the second face-to-face Mashcat event in North America will be held January 24, 2017, at Georgia State University Library in Atlanta, Georgia. We invite you to save the date, and we hope to have registration and a schedule for this low-cost (less than $10), 1-day event open by November.

At present, we are accepting proposals for talks, events, panels, workshops or other sessions for the Mashcat event. We are open to a variety of formats, with the reminder that this will be a one-day, single-track event aiming to support the cross-pollination goals of Mashcat (see more below). We are open to proposals for sessions led virtually. Please submit your proposals using this form (UPDATE: the call for proposals is now closed.). All proposals must be received by October 25, 2016, midnight EST, and we will respond to all proposals by November 8, 2016.

What is Mashcat? “Mashcat” was originally an event in the UK in 2012 aimed at bringing together people working on the IT systems side of libraries with those working in cataloguing and metadata. Four years later, Mashcat is a loose group of metadata specialists, cataloguers, developers and anyone else with an interest in how metadata in and around libraries can be created, manipulated, used and re-used by computers and software. The aim is to work together and bridge the communications gap that has sometimes gotten in the way of building the best tools we possibly can to manage library data. Among our accomplishments in 2016 was holding the first North American face-to-face event in Boston in January and running webinars. If you’re unable to attend a face-to-face meeting, we will be holding at least one more webinar in 2016. For more information about mashcat in general, see http://www.mashcat.info/.

For more information about the Atlanta event or for questions about the proposal form, please contact Erin Leach (eleach@uga.edu). Thanks for considering, and we hope to see you in January.

We are excited to announce that the second face-to-face Mashcat event in North America will be held on January 24th, 2017, in downtown Atlanta, Georgia, USA. We invite you to save the date. We will be sending out a call for session proposals and opening up registration in the late summer and early fall.

Not sure what Mashcat is? “Mashcat” was originally an event in the UK in 2012 aimed at bringing together people working on the IT systems side of libraries with those working in cataloguing and metadata. Four years later, Mashcat is a loose group of metadata specialists, cataloguers, developers and anyone else with an interest in how metadata in and around libraries can be created, manipulated, used and re-used by computers and software. The aim is to work together and bridge the communications gap that has sometimes gotten in the way of building the best tools we possibly can to manage library data. Among our accomplishments in 2016 was holding the first North American face-to-face event in Boston in January and running webinars. If you’re unable to attend a face-to-face meeting, we will be holding at least one more webinar in 2016.

We’re pleased to announce that several free webinars are scheduled for the first three months of 2016. Mark your calendars!

Date/Time

Speaker

Title

26 January 2016 (14:00-17:00 UTC / 09:00-12:00 EST)

Owen Stephens

Installing OpenRefine

This webinar will be an opportunity for folks to see how OpenRefine can be installed and to get help doing so, and serves as preparation for the webinar in March. There will also be folks at hand in the Mashcat Slack channel to assist.Recording / Slides (pptx)

19 February 2016 (18:00-19:00 UTC / 13:00-14:00 EST)

Terry Reese

Evolving MarcEdit: Leveraging Semantic Data in MarcEdit.

Library metadata is currently evolving — and whether you believe this evolution will lead to a fundamental change in how Libraries manage their data (as envisioned via BibFrame) or more of an incremental change (like RDA); one thing that is clear is the merging of traditional library data and semantic data. Over the next hour, I’d like to talk about how this process is impacting how MarcEdit is being developed, and look at some of the ways that Libraries can not just begin to embed semantic data into their bibliographic records right now — but also begin to new services around semantic data sources to improve local workflows and processes.

OpenRefine is a powerful tool for analyzing, fixing, improving and enhancing data. In this session the basic functionality of OpenRefine will be introduced, demonstrating how it can be used to explore and fix data, with particular reference to the use of OpenRefine in the context of library data and metadata.

The registration link for each webinar will be communicated in advance. Many thanks to Alison Hitchens of the University of Waterloo and Shana McDanold of Georgetown University for providing hosting for the webinars.

We are excited to announce that the first face-to-face Mashcat event in North America will be held on January 13th, 2016, at Simmons College in Boston, Massachusetts. We invite you to view the schedule for the day as well as register at http://www.mashcat.info/2016-event/. We have a strict limit on the number of participants we can accept for this inaugural North America Mashcat face to face event, so register early! If you run into any issues with registering, you can email signup AT mashcat.info.

We are excited to announce that the first face-to-face Mashcat event in North America will be held on January 13th, 2016, at Simmons College in Boston, Massachusetts. We invite you to save the date, and we hope to have registration and a schedule for this low-cost (less than $10), 1-day event announced in November.

At present, we are accepting proposals for talks, events, panels, workshops or other for the Mashcat event. We are open to a variety of formats, with the reminder that this will be a one-day, single-track event aiming to support the cross-pollination goals of Mashcat (see more below). We are open to proposals for sessions led virtually. Please submit your proposals using this form. All proposals must be received by November 1st, 2015, midnight, and we will respond to all proposals by November 8th, 2015.

Not sure what Mashcat is? “Mashcat” was originally an event in the UK in 2012 which was aimed at bringing together people working on the IT systems side of libraries with those working in cataloguing and metadata. Three years later, Mashcat is a loose group of metadata specialists, cataloguers, developers and anyone else with an interest in how metadata in and around libraries can be created, manipulated, used and re-used by computers and software. The aim is to work together and bridge the communications gap that has sometimes gotten in the way of building the best tools we possibly can to manage library data.

There are a number of folks blogging about library data, library systems, and the intersection thereof. To help readers find these blogs, the Mashcat website is now offering a “planet”, i.e., an aggregator of those blogs’ RSS feeds.

mashcat

Mashcat is a mashed library event focussing on cataloguing data. For cataloguers, developers and anyone else with an interest in how library catalogue data can be created, manipulated, used and re-used by computers and software.